William James Glackens

William James Glackens 1870-1938, American landscape and genre painter and illustrator, b. Philadelphia. An illustrator for Philadelphia and New York City newspapers and magazines for many years, Glackens first exhibited his paintings with the Eight and achieved fame as a brilliant painter of the contemporary scene. In his early works he used a dark palette. After staying in Paris, he adapted the technique of the French impressionist school and turned to a brighter range of colors. He was particularly influenced by Renoir. Parade, Washington Square (Whitney Mus., New York City), and Nude with Apple (Brooklyn Mus., New York) are characteristic of his later work. He is well represented in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa., and other leading American collections.

Bibliography: See I. Glackens, William Glackens and the Ashcan Group (1957).

Glackens, William James (1870–1938). American painter and draughtsman. His early career was spent mainly as a newspaper illustrator in his native Philadelphia, but he was encouraged to take up painting by Robert Henri, whom he met in 1891. In 1896 he settled in New York and in 1908 he was one of the group of painters who exhibited together as The Eight. He is considered one of the central figures of the Ashcan School, but he was less concerned with Social Realism than with representing the life of the people as a colourful spectacle, and he was heavily influenced by the Impressionists. By the time of the Armory Show (1913), which he helped to organize, Glackens was painting in a style reminiscent of the early Renoir. From 1912 he was employed as art consultant by Dr Albert C. Barnes and toured Europe buying paintings that formed the nucleus of the celebrated Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pennsylvania. In 1917 he was elected first president of the Society of Independent Artists.